Mill Bank Lane

The site, which is located in a fringe Urban location in Christchurch, is the last vacant section (257m2) within a dense cluster of new houses recently built on a narrow strip of land between the Avon River and a main arterial road out of the City. The main priority for the Client was the idea of ‘Living in a Garden setting’, but the expansive accommodation brief did not allow for the ‘physical’ manifestation of this requirement to be achieved on such a small site.

Our solution was to make the house itself the ‘garden’, and to use the notional idea of living inside a green ‘topiary’ hedge’ as the design generator for the Concept, the built form, its massing and its relationship to their close surrounding neighbours. The House is to be built in two stages (two hedge forms ) and will be entirely clad in green (malthoid impregnated with fine stone chips) shingles that are moulded and fixed onto every surface of the contoured ‘hedge’ shapes of the proposed new residence. The tops of the hedge (roofscape) terminate with large roof lights that ‘search out’ the sun and natural light above the surrounding dense existing two/three story standalone houses.